It’s Exciting Date Minus A Week, and it’s difficult to think about anything else. I keep looking at Peter’s dating profile, saved on to the laptop, and rereading his emails. We’ve swapped real-world email addresses and the letters keep coming, short but regular, at coffee pauses in the day and longer in the evening.
I’ve Googled him, reassured to see his identity confirmed, and have seen him: a slightly creased, almost-handsome, linen-suited academic. He has a bit of a food-loving, France-loving mid-life belly and eyes full of irony and warmth. Irony, warmth? I’m making assumptions; I know this. He might hate France; he might be a wife-beater. I’ve developed my own idea of Peter and he, no doubt, is developing his idea of me. Until we meet, nothing can really be done about this. The mind rushes on.
I’ve Googled myself – there isn’t much and no recent photographs because I’ve been hiding from cameras for five years. I’m less slender than I was at 45, but I shrink from mentioning that. (It’ll be fine. I’ll not eat any bread between now and then. And I’ll wear a black dress with cunning fat-clamping panels. It’ll be fine).
But it’s not just my physical self that might have been misrepresented in this lead-up. In my letters to Peter I’m the kind of person who can handle most things, who’s charming, cheerful, non-melancholy and un-neurotic, whose response to the ups and downs is (almost relentlessly) philosophical. I wish I really was her, that woman Peter’s writing to. We have no inkling of each other’s complexities. As yet, we haven’t even spoken on the phone.
His first email was detached, short and friendly. He said meeting would be a hoot. Hoot might be a word that signals fundamental unavailability for a relationship, or fear of rejection. If events are only a hoot, there isn’t much to lose. But that’s fine. I’m also badly in need of a hoot.
Hot on the heels of the hoot email, a longer one arrived, one more frank about hope and heartbreak. This was the beginning of a bout of intense messaging, in which we swapped our sad stories, though we told them to each other in a Woody Allen-style voiceover, competing to see who could be funnier. Then we agreed not to talk about past relationships again. We both wanted to draw a line and reinvent life: that’s how we talked to each other on the fourth day of emailing. It turns out Peter has been divorced twice. Both failures were stories I could relate to and both women are reportedly happily remarried, so he passed the Dump Test. (If he’s a dumper and not a dumpee, I’m interested in the story. If he’s a serial dumper, if he keeps getting bored or has found a string of women sexually dull, there may be a loud buzzing in my ears. If he left a 50-year-old woman because she had let herself go, the conversation is probably over.)
On day four, Peter asked if he could have my number. He had something important to ask. I gave it to him in trepidation (please, not more Stockings and Heels talk), and the question arrived. It said, “Cryptic crosswords, yes or no?” I answered – yes! – and asked him in a second text, “Ikea, yes or no?”, to which the answer, rightly, was: “Addicted to the meatballs.”
After this we were off, texting random questions intermittently. By day five, dozens of whimsical queries had been sent; whimsy was the key thing. Simultaneously via email we’re exchanging top 10s – our top 10 films, songs, books, meals, cities, heroes, places, dates to return to in a time machine: you name it, we’re top-tenning it. I barely have time to work. I’m watching my phone for its little light to flash.
His messages have begun to venture beyond friendship. He texted today that he was about to go into a dull meeting, but feeling happy because he had me in his life. He said: “I’m enjoying this, but I want more. I want a lot more.” It was clear that it was time, so I sent him an email confessing to looking my age. His reply was “snap” – he’s put on a good stone and is considerably greyer than in the site photograph. He says he doesn’t care a jot about my weight. I may be in love already.
